Flight Analysis using Flight Recorders.

Flight recorders are great for proving flights have been completed for the purpose of
competitions and badges but they have the ability to tell us a lot more than. “Task not
completed.” There is an enormous amount of information that can be gleaned from
the flight recorder. Let’s look at a number of pieces of information one by one. I have
used SeeYou as this is certainly the most common flight analysis program being used.

Thermalling rule number 1. Maintain a constant angle of bank and speed so that
your position is fixed in space until you choose to move it.

If you want to use your logger to give you some decent analysis it is important to set
the logger to record at a suitable intervals. If the recording interval is too long you
will get traces like the one in Figure 1, and you will learn nothing from your logger as
to how you are thermalling. The best setting to put your logger on is one that will give
you a regular shape Square, Pentagon or Hexagon when thermalling at the correct
angle of bank and speed. Fig 2 indicates that if we have a glider flying at 45° angle of
bank the time to turn will be 15 seconds at 45 knots, 16.5 seconds at 50 knots and 18
Seconds at 55 Knots. So if we have a logger setting of 3 seconds we will get 5 fixes
per turn and so get a pentagon when thermalling dry and Hexagon when thermalling
wet. Naturally this depends upon the glider you are flying, but it shows the principle.
We should see a thermal as Fig 3 in this case with nice pentagons, assuming the pilot
was flying dry! If however we see the geometry changing from pentagons to squares
and then to Hexagons we can see that the pilot is flying erratically.
For more accurate examination of a climb look at the time you entered the thermal,
and the time you exited. Count the number of turns and calculate the turn rate. And
compare to Figure number 4.

Speed in Knots
45 50 55
45° 15 16.5 18
3 Sec
int 5 5.5 6
Shape Pentagon Hexagon
Time to turn in seconds 45° v Speed

Fig 1 Fig 2

Fig 3
 Turn time in Time
in Seconds Speed in Knots
40 45 50 55 60
25 28.3 31.8 35.4 38.9 42.4
30 22.8 25.7 28.6 31.4 34.3
35 18.8 21.2 23.5 25.9 28.3
40 15.7 17.7 19.7 21.6 23.6
45 13.2 14.8 16.5 18.1 19.8
50 11.1 12.5 13.8 15.2 16.6

Fig 4.

Thermalling Rule 2, never fly in the same bit of sink twice.

The data recorder can help show you how well you are obeying this rule.
If your logger recording interval is much more than seven seconds it will
smooth out the graph and be of little use. To look at the climb it is
necessary to zoom into the thermal so that it is stretched out considerably.
There are two examples below, one where the pilot has the thermal cored, the other
not. Fig 5

Fig 5

Rule 3. Leave the thermal when it becomes the strength of the next thermal that
you will climb in.
What so often happens with novice pilots is that they stay in a thermal until it reaches
the top. Rather than when it begins to loose its strength. Again we can look at a
couple of traces in Fig 6
Fig 6

The climb on the left is what we are looking for but the pilot on the left needs some
improving and we will detail the aspects of his climb. In this climb the pilot averaged
5.7 knots for the bulk of the climb but by the time he had left the climb it averaged 3.9
knots. So how did we work out these figures and is there anything we can examine to
see why the pilot did what he did. Let’s look at the map view of the pilots on the
rights flight in Figure 7. We can see that many pilots climb well in the thermal but
then think that they have lost the core so start looking around for “The lost core”
rather than moving on, this is clearly seen by looking at this view. To get the figures
for the climb rate within the thermal we go the map and pressing the shift key we
click the mouse on the start of the climb a blue marker will show we keep the shift
key held down and move the mouse to the point that we want to measure to and
release the shift key, the red end marker is created. If we go to the statistics page and
click the statistics tab we can read the data from the selected period, as shown in
Figure 8. Using this technique we can further examine other sections of the climb.
Fig 7

Fig 8

Diversions?
Some pilots fly in a straight line to the next
turning point whereas others divert a lot with the
aim of picking up as much energy as possible on
the way to the next turning point. It is very
difficult to put a rule how much diversion
should be done. Perhaps the best way to see how
much diversion should be done is to look at
other pilot’s flights on the same day. But how
do we work out how much diversion has been
flown? On the top left of the screen is the
distance between the two marked points260 k in
this case Fig 9. Further down is the column Dis
Done in this case 285.8 k, an increase in
Fig 9
distance of 9.9%. So what does this mean when it comes to degrees of diversion? The
chart Figure 10 shows the angle of diversion from track against the extra distance
flown. So we can see up to 15° diversion gives virtually no extra distance to fly but
once we start to divert any more we need to start to be expecting to get a thermal that
will increase the cross country speed by that amount. But remember that sometimes a
diversion is necessary to just to stay in the air.

0 0.00%
5 0.38%
10 1.54%
15 3.53%
20 6.42%
25 10.34%
30 15.47%
35 22.08%
40 30.54%
45 41.42%
50 55.57%
55 74.34%
60 100.00%

Fig 10

General information from the Logger.

We can see from the data the date of the flight and
basic self explanatory details, but in addition we can
see that this flight is legal in that the landing took
place before sun set and certainly before last light.
We can of course see our flight time for our log book.

Fig 11
In addition we can confirm that the task has been completed but we have additional
information like the speed for each leg with the additional information as to the height
that each turn point was rounded, so from this chart we can see that Pithara and
Alderside were both rounded at the same height, what a coincidence, and so the speed
of 92.13 kph down that leg was a true speed whereas the next leg all be it a bit slower
could perhaps
be compensated
by the fact that
the turning point
was rounded
somewhat
higher. In
addition it can
be seen that the
third turning
point has no
town name just
a number that
has given to it,
we no longer
have to turn Fig 12.
specific points
on the ground when using flight recorders.
We should consider that if there was a wind blowing did we turn the turning point at
the most efficient height.

Fig 13
Percentage time Thermalling and Cruising.

Flight statistics are worth studying, Figure 13. In this case the pilot spent 39% of his
time thermalling and nearly 4% of this time in sink! Perhaps they need some polishing
up here.
The percentage can be calculated by taking the Altitude loss / (altitude gain + Altitude
loss). In this case 3366/(3366+81631)

We should question if the 39% of the time thermalling is good or not. Looking at the
gliders polar should give us an indication as to what we should achieve on a given
day.
Using Figure 14 we can calculate the expected time thermalling. We look at the
average thermal strength for the day 3.3knots and then draw a line till it touches the
polar of our glider. We can see the average sink rate that we expect whilst gliding
between thermals 2.6 knots in this case , in addition to the average inter thermal speed
we should have flown at and the cross country speed for the day. If we add the
average thermal strength to the average sink rate whilst cruising 3.3 + 2.6 = 5.9 we
can then get the expected percentage of time cruising 3.3/5.9 = 56% and climbing
2.6/5.9= 44% so on this day the pilot actually achieved 39% climbing bettering
Macredy by 5% by using streets and picking up lift in cruise.

We would expect on a Cu day to be able to better the theoretical cruise percentage by

a greater margin than on a blue day. You will find that the stronger the thermal
strength the lower the percentage time you will spend climbing.

Let’s look at the straight flight. 17% in rising air with an average of 4.3 knots and the
rest in sinking air. This statistic is so variable on the weather conditions but try to
keep it as high as possible. At least we can see that the pilot flew a little slower in the
lift but what does the polar suggest Figure 15. Firstly we can see with the 3.3knot
thermal average the pilot should have averaged about 85kph cross country speed, but
this would have been affected by the wind speed on the day of 21kph. The
recommended glide angle is the angle of the line drawn from the average rate of climb
to the point where it touches the polar in the diagram above. We can calculate it as
follows. Sink rate in cruise / Interthermal speed. Being in this case 93knots/2.6knots =
35.7 whereas the actual glide angle for the day was 34.7 as shown in the statistics.
Don’t forget however that this is affected by the wind, a head wind will decrease your
glide angle for the leg and a tail wind decrease it. But remember that if some of the
flight is into wind and some down wind on average the into wind leg suffers more
than the down wind leg gains.

The Polar curve also indicates that he inter thermal speed should have been about 170
Kph on pure Mcready, whearas the statistics show that 140 was nearer the speed
flown and 170 was the maximum, ok we expect that we should always fly slower than
the theoretical Mcready setting, but perhaps in this case it was too slow. This could
answer some of the reasons why the glide angle was flatter than the theoretical and
thus why the overall speed was slower than predicted.

Note that if the statistics are taken over a long flight where the beginning of the day is
poor lift and the middle strong followed by poor lift at the end of the day again,
averages are of little use, we need to split the day up into segments of consistant
strength in order to get some decent figures to work on.

3 3.3knots average rate of climb

2
Average Cross country speed
1
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170

1 Inter thermal speed

2
2.6 knots average rate of
3 sink Inter Thermal

4
Fig 14

What else can we see on the statistics on Figure13? The pilot has climbed almost
twice as many turns to the left as right, perhaps they need a little more practice going
the other way, although there does tend to be logic in turning to the right when for
example the headwind track has the wind on the right quarter. I have seen some traces
with virtually all the turns in one direction, in these cases the pilot needs to do some
major practice at fixing this. Note however not to take into account the percentage of
time turning to right or left prior to the start as flights in competition prior to the start
will generally be to the right. So we see again the need to break the flight into
sections. There were four thermals where the turns were mixed, i.e. the pilot changed
direction and looking further we can see that they gained little in height and rate of
climb. If you are trying to study thermal rotation and reverse the turn see if it is
worthwhile. Just look at those tries 18 in total in reality a waist of 12 minutes for the
flight, not only this but using the calculation we did before we can see that 24% of the
tries were in sink!

In SeeYou flight statistics there are four tabs. The first for the full flight the next for
the flight, the third for a section that you may have specifically marked out as we did
earlier and the last is the Phases as shown in Fig 15. This helps break down the flight
for more detailed analysis. Whereas the barograph trace shows the high and low spots,
it also shows the pilot who likes to stay high and the pilot who will risk going low it is
difficult to see at a glance the rate of climb, although this can be done by double
clicking anywhere on the climb and down the bottom you will get the figures for the
rate of climb at that point and the average rate of climb from the top to the bottom.
The phases show at a glance the mentality of the flight. We can see at a glance on this
flight that climbs of over 6 knots were being achieved by looking in the column
AVario. But at the time of12:22 and 12:26 time was waisted in much lower rates of
climb than were necessary 5 minutes in total at less than 2/3 of the expected climb
rate and at a good height.

The glides can also be examined and considering the rates of climb being achieved
150 kph is 80 knots perhaps not fast enough for the aircrafts polar shown in Fig 16
that indicates a speed to be flown of 160 Kph, OK no need to fly at Mcready but not
that much slower when the conditions look reliable. We can however look at the times
that the speed was slowed down to fly through rising air at 116 kph no height lost but
still a bit slow 62 kph when there were 6 knot climbs ahead.

Fig 15
6

1 Fig 16
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 170

Maggot racing.
This is a term for adding a number of gliders to the view that has a line below the
glider indicating its height. When animated they look like little maggots racing round
the course. You can add a number of gliders to the screen and synchronise
them to all start at the same time, irrespective of their actual start time, using
the icon show. Now you can see why the winner won and the looser lost by
looking at the critical decisions made.

Perhaps the most important thing that we can achieve with these flight recorders it to
examine how we fly, but most important of all it to put into action what we have
learnt. There is no point looking at SeeYou and saying look at that great climb that I
or you had if you do not learn from the data and put it into action in the future.